Odd John (thing)

It is about a new and superior kind of human being born in the present - Olaf Stapledon's present being around fifty years before ours at the time he wrote this book. His parents are human like us, but the implication is that the recombination of their very different virtues creates the seed for something new. In some Odd John seems oddly slow at first, because he doesn't understand some things that ordinary people understand about each other instinctively. Soon he becomes clever enough to control those around him - and to become bored with it.

Although this is in some ways a utopian novel, it also reflects Olaf Stapledon's deep frustration with humanity and the wars of his era, and peoples failure to be what they could be. John is not good in a conventional sense, and some of the things he does will horrify you. There is a strong sense his upbringing among modern people has warped him somehow, although I can't help think a truly improved human being would deal with this world better than the best of us.